Flu diary: Great Pandemic 2009, part 8

DCLWolf

Colorado Springs — My first day back among the living at a paying job, Monday, November 23, 2009, and I pretty much feel dead, sitting at my desk. My boss asked me if I felt better (he was the only one who seemed to realize I had not been in for many days). I do feel better, a little, compared to last Friday, or Thursday, all the way back to Monday a week ago. Of course, worries about Thanksgiving are already elbowing me, and how we are going to pull that off while recovering from the flu.

It is good, though, that my office is private, and so I do not have people trooping by a sawed-off cubicle all the day long. It is quiet in here, the atmosphere nice and cool and calm, and I have an excellent view of Pikes Peak if I just crank my head slightly to the left. It hurts, a little, to crank my head slightly to the left. I will attempt not to enjoy the view so much today.

I am able to concentrate on editing a document, repairing inverted sentences, catching typos, and it feels good to be doing something constructive. It also helps to know that I will receive a paycheck due to the fact that I am sitting here raking through the ashes of training materials.

Sometime about noon I feel the virus attempting a sneak attack. Perhaps this is just my imagination. But I suddenly feel a wave of unreality sweep over me, similar to an anxiety attack — except that I am not particularly anxious at the moment — also similar to a lighting headache, but my head does not hurt either. The closest that I can describe this sense of abnormalacy is to say that it feels like I am about to faint.

A cup of green tea, cooling, sits near my left hand. I retrieve a packet of emergen-c from a drawer in my desk. As I rip open the packet of 1000 mg of Vitamin C and other assorted vitamins, supplements and herbs, the headache — in delayed reaction — catches up and slams into the back of my head, sinks in its claws, and clambers up over the crown of my head and settles down to a tight coil in my forehead.

I do not have anything with which to stir the tea/emergen-c congolomeration so I swish the liquid while my head sloshes above my neck. Weird feeling, am I having a stroke, or a brain embolism? I feel weakness and that pervading sense of unreality, as if this is a dream, a bad dream, and it is hard to determine why I am sitting here swishing a cup of lukewarm fizzy tea in a broken office chair, in such a nice private office, and what exactly I should be doing.

For a few terrible moments I feel that I will vomit across the desktop. That would just be great. Not only is our contract worky a sicky, missing a whole lot of work, but now he is fouling our air and equipment. I already have enough black marks against my name just for getting ill, allowing myself to contract the new and improved novel influenza when all good people of good breeding and taste completely avoid the flu of swine, h1n1. The sensation of impending barf recedes, a little bit, as well as the headache.

I sip at the tea, snorfling down a lot of powder that floats on the top. Hey, it is a pretty good combination, I should always drink it this way, it could be called t-emergen-c. Maybe not, at least the name, but I feel revived almost immediately. I release a long, stuttering exhalation.

Whew, that was a close one. And here I am supposed to be, well...well. I do not feel very well.

Over the next hour I will feel like the odd assortment of  jumbled together instruments in a one-man band. And the one-man playing the instruments is a cadaverous giant, perching me at the edge of his too-sharp kneecap. His drunken breath wafts across me as he loudly mixes the oom-pa-pa of polka, with the furious crippled poetry of rap, driveling country twang, and some obnoxious Sousa march band.

My ears pop, my nasal passages inflate, my heart flutters, my head off-again/on-again aches, and the room even manages to move a bit, though it never quite executes either flip or spin.

I have to sit with my eyes closed for about thirty seconds and rapidly push my fingers through my hair, dragging my fingertips from my forehead all the way back over to the back of my neck, feeding myself positive affirmation in the echoing confines of my head, hoping no one happens to walk by my office for the next thirty seconds or so.

Then it passes, and for an hour I feel fine. Then for an hour my cough wants to join the band, and it is a true ham, blasting out solos to the accompanying percussion of my rattling chest.

Supposedly I am over the flu. It is all said and done, save for the cough, which promises to hang around — Mr. Coughy — or as long as he is unwelcome, or until I am dead, or whichever comes first.

I call home several times to check on the kids. Everyone is great, hardly a symptom showing itself. Even Dirky is feeling great, though he now has produced some troubling mucus. We have all now experienced the odd new symptoms that include a rapid, ripping headache, severe nausea, and vomiting. Although I have experience all the symptoms worse than anyone else, at least I have not actually vomited, although the overwhelming nausea has struck me multiple times.

For whatever reason, the Swine Flu loves me the best. It loves to drag me around the house, lick me and stick me to the ceiling, then bounce me for a while. What a kidder, that extra mild Swine Flu.

I survive the day and make it home to my family. I assure that all the vaporizers are spouting steam, which takes me about fifteen minutes to accomplish. I make certain everyone has quaffed their Oreganol and vitamins. I spend a some time slicing fresh onions to place about the house in their plates, and again, I believe it is what comes out of the onions — sulfur — not any fanciful virus zapping that makes this measure a worthwhile expenditure of minutes and perhaps fifty cents worth of onions.

Carolena wants me to make the flu-fighting Tofu Noodle Soup, which only takes me about 15 minutes to accomplish, mixing in a large pot a block of tofu, olive oil,  one whole onion, lots of Ginger and Oregano spices, about 21 cloves of garlic, and a packet of fettucine noodles, and finally wandering off to change out of my clothes while the soup boils. There will probably be enough soup left over for me to take a cup or two to work tomorrow, which should aid in the imaginary flu attack that will surely ensue.

Tofu Noodle Soup is not only delicious, but perhaps one of the most comforting foods available to be eaten this side of Heaven. Sad, sick, sarcastic? Have a bowl of Tofu Noodle Soup, and then the mandatory second bowl (you will not have a choice on that second bowl). Similar to Chicken Noodle Soup, but better in every way, not to mention the Avian Flu (I promise I will not mention it) (and here, for a second time I will not mention Bird Flu).

We have an appointment set for tomorrow with a doctor to check out Baby Genny's lungs, which will give us some clue as to whether or not I have pneumonia, as Genny and I have similar coughs, similar wheezings.

Carolena, all these days later, has not become ill with influenza. It is true, she had it in July 2009, along with the rest of our family, so she probably has some immunity built up against it (which should have applied to the rest of us as well, sadly). But even she is having some heavy, dark yellow mucus come up with her nasal flushes. I think that the most likely truth is that she too, is inundated with the virus, but for whatever reason the novel h1n1 Swine Flu did not choose set up a base HQ, or else it has been doing just that all this time but Carolena's immune system has been handy enough to whip it into a huddled, whimpering mass, every time. Poor flu did not stand a chance.

Useful tools when fighting the Swine Flu: Nasal flush, vaporizers, the Gut Bomb (Ginger and Oregano), Sambucus, onions and garlic. From freshly fighting the flu, I would say that none of these are better than any other thing, but that they should all be employed in rocking and socking the Swine Flu. Carolena is a good sample of an adult with a healthy immune system staying on top of the flu. But do not forget Sauerkraut and Onion Soup, and fruit juices, and ginger ale (only the real kind, with real ginger, and decidedly no artificial sweeteners — if you have not kicked the hard-to-kick habit of artificial sweeteners, today would be a good day to start).

I, on the other hand, cannot be viewed as a very good example, chiefly due to my compromised lungs (okay, and I also have a huge nose, that probably does not help) and asthma. I do believe that I have done far better against this so-called "mild" flu than if I had done nothing, or if I had relied upon vaccines or over-the-counter symptom treaters. Although I am big on "the mind" and developing the brain, I am not big on placebos (if I were, I would begin smoking cigars again after a ten-year absence, as they seemed to solve all problems).

Monday night Dirklan again is the most ill, he feels terrible with a headache, nausea, and blood from his nose. Wolfy is fine, with his rocky constitution, and Bronté is just a tad under the weather. The only way Genny seems ill is her cough, which sounds if it is being strained by Elmer's Glue.

Throughout late Monday night and early Tuesday morning, I wake and toss and turn, sweating even without blankets, having wild flu dreams. Somehow I am in Alice Hoffman's The Probable Future, at the end of the book where all the strings get tied together, and it is just after Eleanor Sparrow's funeral, and I'm looking through Cake House, and all the characters are in a ring around me holding strings, which are tied to parts and pieces of me, and I keep telling them that I could do much better if it were not for the Swine Flu. They roll their eyes and whisper to each other. I have never felt so judged in my entire life.

It probably did not help that this morning at work I was listening to The Probable Future on my iPod, probably around the time that I felt that sense of unreality sweep over me, and probably suffered brain collapse wherein neurons collieded with neurons which should remain pristine.

Or else in my sleep I wandered into an alternate universe where Cake House is real. Ah, Jenny Sparrow.

The thought has occured to me, what if I catch this again? Yes, I know what the experts say, and repeat, and say again, repetitiously, I redundantly ditto. I know what they say. And I also have a dim understanding of immunity. But then again, I have already caught it twice, and I was healthy last time too before my boss sneezed on me.

The thought of going through this again, especially when considering that I usually have a strong system against flu, it is not an easy thought to think about. I certainly do not wish to entertain the thoughts of my precious children going through this again.

What if this Swine Flu turns out to be an antigenic chameleon? Pulling off swift disguise changes? So that not only can you catch it (or it can catch you) twice, but possibly three times, four times, or more, in a single year, or in a single season?

I have experienced this mild h1n1 Swine Flu, and I can assure you, the human race will not react well to this imagined Chameleon Flu.

BY Douglas Christian Larsen

continue to Flu diary: Great Pandemic 2009, part 9.

Swine Flu and Lust for Flesh
Deviled Eggs and the Kingdom of Profits
Prayer: simply talking to God

Local Colorado Springs Links:  Vegetarian Society of Colorado
Happy Cow Listing for Vegetarian Restaurants in Colorado Springs
  Colorado Springs Vitamin Cottage
Sunflower Farmers Market  -  Wholefoods Market
Memorial Health System Influenza Information  -  Flu Clinics in Colorado Springs